After losing her grandfather to black lung, Labor backbencher Jo-Ann Miller has broken down in Queensland Parliament revealing her father has also been diagnosed with the disease, as new laws are passed giving those affected better access to workers' compensation.

The emotional speech came during debate in Parliament over amended legislation relating to workers' compensation and rehabilitation for those with coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP), also known as black lung disease.

The reidentification of the disease in 2015 sparked the formation of a parliamentary committee to investigate how regulatory systems failed and how to protect workers in the future.

The legislation, which passed with bipartisan support, will see those who have retired or left the coal mining industry before January 1, 2017 offered funding for medical examinations to encourage more testing for the disease.

It will also ensure those diagnosed with CWP can apply to reopen a workers' compensation claim to access further benefits and offer extra rehabilitation support to assist workers back into suitable alternative employment.

'One of the hardest things I've had to do': Miller

Ms Miller, who chaired the committee, became emotional while recounting the moment she told her 90-year-old father, who spent 46 years underground in the coal mines in Ipswich and Rosewood, had recently been diagnosed with black lung.

"He is a man that I love dearly and one of the hardest things I've had to do was tell him that he has black lung," she said.

What is black lung?

Pneumoconiosis is a potentially fatal disease caused by long exposure to coal dust, more commonly known as "black lung" because those with the disease have lungs that look black instead of a healthy pink.

Black lung most often stems from working in the coal industry or in the manufacturing of graphite or man-made carbon products and has no known cure.

The risk of getting black lung depends on how much time has been spent around coal dust.

There are two types of black lung: simple and complicated.

There are relatively few symptoms associated with simple black lung, also known as coal worker's pneumoconiosis (CWP), and the prognosis is usually good.

But CWP can progress into the more complicated progressive massive fibrosis (PMF), the symptoms of which may include a long-term cough and shortness of breath.

There is no cure for black lung, but doctors may be able to treat complications caused by the disease.

Source: University of Kentucky, US National Library of Medicine and The Lancet

"I had to get my own head around his reaction knowing that he too may die like his dad died.

"Like many other miners died in Ipswich, like many other miners across Queensland are going to die an awful death because of this disease."

Ms Miller said her father who lives in a nursing home in high care said, "I always thought I had it, but I didn't really want to know I had it".

Ms Miller said she begged him to get tested earlier but he was reluctant.

"He was so fearful of him dying the same death that his father went through and what he saw and what he witnessed."

Ms Miller, a former Queensland police minister, was called upon to quit the party on Wednesday after she compared her own Labor government to the Bjelke-Petersen era, accusing Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk of standing by former Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale despite being aware of corruption allegations.

The Opposition's mines spokesman Andrew Cripps said he expected more wide-ranging legislation to follow.

"It's a preparatory bill in anticipation of significant and perhaps more wide-ranging reforms to mine safety and health legislation as a result of recommendations of the CWP select committee," he said.

Ms Miller commended the work of both sides of Parliament in bringing the legislation forward.

"There has been many an occasion when Lawrence [Springborg] sometimes sat next to me, the Member for Southern Downs, and I've had tears streaming down my face because I thought my dad had black lung," she said.